CerebralDebris

It seems that 2010 is going to be a year of non-stop traveling for Charlotte and I, but starting tomorrow we embark upon what is likely to be the biggest and most varied trip of the year. We’re flying from Indianapolis to JFK Airport in New York, and then from JFK to Barcelona, Spain. We’ll spend two days wandering around Barcelona, and then rent a car and proceed to take a leisurely drive through the southern French country-side, stopping at various towns for day trips as we make our way towards Albi (to the NE of Toulouse), where Charlotte’s sister is getting married on the 15th.

We’re really looking forward to the trip. Charlotte has only been to Barcelona once before, for a few days during the winter, and neither of us have ever been to really any of the places in Southern France that we’re planning on going, so it’ll be an adventure for both of us. Charlotte also has a ton of studying to do, so it’s likely we’ll spend a few hours each day in a cafe or similar. I’m hoping to use that time to continue working on my current fiction project (the sequel to The Blood That Bonds), but also to do some photo uploading and travel blogging.

So … if all goes as planned, expect several updates over the course of the next two weeks!

Thanks to campru for the image!

Recently we’ve been on a warm streak here in Indianapolis, and that got me craving some refreshing summer cocktails. I wanted to make one of my favorites, the gin gimlet, but was lacking Rose’s Lime Juice, an essential ingredient in that particular classic. Undaunted, I set about creating a replacement cocktail with the same refreshing blend of citrus, the punch of gin, and just a touch of sweetness.

The end result? The Arizona Gimlet, which I’m really quite happy with. It’s got a real citrus kick, but the vermouth helps smooth things out and keeps the gin from being overpowering, and the agave syrup, when used with a light touch, avoids the cloying sweetness that Rose’s lime sometimes delivers. I’ve even come up with two different preparations, depending on what mood you’re in. Give it a try!

The Recipe

2 oz gin
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz fresh lime juice
1/3rd oz Agave Nectar (raw, amber, light … whatever kind you want)

Preparation 1: Combine ingredients with ice in a shaker, shake like crazy, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve with a twist of lime. Delicious and potent!

Preparation 2: Combine ingredients with ice in a shaker, shake like crazy, strain into a rocks glass over ice, top with club soda and stir. Serve with a lime wedge. Refreshing!

Well, after a crazy night last night, the seedings for the first round of the NBA playoffs have finally been established. The games start on Saturday afternoon, and I look forward to several weeks of spending too much time in sports bars and/or in front of my TV. Without further ado, here are my picks:

Eastern Conference

1. Cleveland Cavaliers vs. 8. Chicago Bulls — Chicago wins one game at home behind huge nights from Rose and Noah, but otherwise gives Cleveland little trouble. Cleveland in five.

2. Orlando Magic vs. 7. Charlotte Bobcats – While their defense keeps the games fairly tight, the Bobcats are completely unable to handle Howard while dealing with Orlando’s depth. Orlando in four.

3. Atlanta Hawks vs. 6. Milwaukee Bucks — Milwaukee puts up a better fight than people might expect, but without Bogut their defense is compromised and they fall to the Hawks. Atlanta in six.

4. Boston Celtics vs. 5. Miami Heat – Boston has no answer for Dwyane Wade, who gets to the rim constantly and either scores or gets bailed out by the refs. Miami’s relative youth provides the slight edge in a hard-fought series. Miami in seven.

Western Conference

1. Los Angeles Lakers vs. 8. Oklahoma City Thunder — LA struggles against the youth, speed, and athleticism of the Thunder, and Kobe takes way too many shots trying to outshine Durant, but the defending champs win out with talent, experience, and Phil Jackson being a huge dick in the media. LA in six.

2. Dallas Mavericks vs. 7. San Antonia Spurs – These two teams have battled each other a ton in the past few years with varying results. Tim Duncan has saved himself all year in the hope of throwing together one last set of superstar playoff performances, and that combined with a healthy team for the first time all year is enough. Spurs in seven.

3. Phoenix vs. 6. Portland Trailblazers – Brandon Roy tries to play on his busted knee, but to little avail. Portland, tortured by the injury bug all year, finally succumbs to their wounds against a Phoenix Suns team that may have been playing the best basketball of any team since the all-star break. Phoenix in five.

4. Denver Nuggets vs. 5. Utah Jazz — Kenyon Martin, hobbling around on one leg, is unable to deal with Milsap and Boozer (even hurt) down low, or Okur outside. AK-47 returns for Utah and goes wild. Chauncey Billups takes too many inadvisable shots trying to be the man. Utah in seven.

The Short Version

• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Streamlined
• Two Words: Shepard Lives!
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

This review contains spoilers from the first 15 minutes of the game, where something major happens. If you haven’t already heard about it, you might be upset at me for mentioning it. Proceed with caution.

When a game is already great, it’s often a tough act to follow. Many sequels to great games have been extremely good games in their own right, but did not quite live up to the original (see: my recent review of BioShock 2). Other sequels to great games are just plain not as good. It’s a rare thing indeed to find a sequel to a great game which is better than the original in virtually all ways. Mass Effect 2 is one of these sequels.

At the end of the first Mass Effect,  your character has saved not just the planet, not just the solar system, and not just the local cluster, but the entire damn Milky Way from annihilation at the hands of the evil Reapers. These creatures are gigantic, sentient, robotic space-squid that hibernate in “dark space” (the empty area between the Milky way and its nearest neighbor) most of the time. Every fifty thousand years or so they wake up, warp in to the galaxy, and proceed to destroy all sentient organic life. Why they choose to do this is not exactly made clear in Mass Effect. For now, it’s good enough that you, as Commander Shepard, have managed to thwart their plans via courage, good looks, and the human penchant for unparalleled violence.

I played through Mass Effect in its entirety not once, but twice, the first time as Commander Adrian Shepard, a bald Asian dude with a rocking handlebar-mustache-and-beard combo that made the ladies swoon, and the second time as Commander Adrienne Shepard, a sharp-faced, raven-haired woman with a predilection for heavy eye-shadow and black lipstick. Both of them were “Paragons,” which is to say that they didn’t choose to be total assholes to anyone and everyone they met. Stick with me here because this will mean something in the long run.

Mass Effect 2 allows you to import your character from the first game and keep playing with the same basic traits, appearance, and so forth. This really helps keep you invested in the story, since you’re picking up right where you left off (well,okay, two months after you left off). Once you’ve imported this character who you’ve grown attached to over the course of dozens of hours of play, the game does the only logical thing: it immediately and mercilessly kills you off.

Never fear, though, because a rogue pro-human agency named Cerberus shouts “WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY” and rebuilds you, Steve Austin-style, over a period of two years and to the tune of 4 billion intergalactic credits (that’s a lot). Cerberus needs you to spearhead the fight against the Collectors, a mysterious alien race that’s abducting human beings from fringe colonies for unknown, but probably Reaper-related, reasons. So now you’re back, albeit with some glowing facial scars and an apparent loss of any and all techniques/powers you acquired in the first game. This is what’s known as “a plausible excuse to set the character back at level one.”

From here you’ll embark on an adventure that spans the galaxy, putting together a team of compatriots twice as large as that found in the first game, and even more varied. I have to fault the game a tiny bit here because a lot of the characters are kind of straight out of “secondary characters 101″ … you’ve got the badass shaved-head convict chick, the brute who just wants to kill things, the philosophical and mild-mannered assassin, the sexy ice-queen with the universe’s greatest ass, the black guy who talks in a semi-urban dialect despite being from outer space, and so forth. You’ll even get to work with a couple of your pals from ME1 in the game, and you’ll visit the others, assuming they survived.

Bioware, the company responsible for the Mass Effect series have a reputation for being pretty much unparalleled masters of the story-based RPG, and the original Mass Effect was a hell of a game in that department.  Mass Effect 2 retains some of the key introductions from the first game. The terrific “dialog wheel” conversation interface is still there, there’s an incredible amount of dialog to be had (all of it with full voice acting), and you are given a wide opportunity during the game to make choices that will affect your Paragon and Renegade scores. Unlike the first game, you can successfully accrue renegade points without being the galaxy’s biggest asshole, so that’s a plus. The game also remembers several choices you made in the first title, and will reference your actions when appropriate. It’s impressive.

In addition to the formidable story depth, they’ve somehow managed to eke out even better-looking environments and characters without making dramatic changes to the overall look and feel of the series. I don’t know how they did it, but they’ve managed to improve the graphical fidelity while simultaneously reducing by a large amount the “texture pop” which is so prevalent in modern, Unreal-Engine games. I only saw it happen a few times, whereas in the first game it was a near-constant experience.

The developers weren’t simply satisfied with improving the graphics and retaining the deep story possibilities of the original, however. They’ve also overhauled several significant areas of the game in order to reduce tedium and keep things rolling along. For example, there’s no longer any need to constantly evaluate the bazillion new items you’re always picking up. Instead, there’s just a simple tech tree to follow and only a few types of weapons to choose from. Upgrades and additional weapon models are available, but they’re relatively rare and very easy to manage. Upgrades = good, always, and the differences between weapon models are substantial and easily determined (and for the most part, there’s little reason to stick with an old model once a new one becomes available). There are also five or six Shepard-only “heavy” weapons to choose from, like a rocket launcher and a beam weapon you steal from the Collectors. You can only carry one at a time, so it’s best to figure out which one you like and stick with it.

They’ve also removed the occasionally fun but mostly awful part of the game where you lumber around planets in your land-based crawler, getting stuck on mountains as you attempt to search for that elusive, unmarked Prothean ruin or pile of lithium that you need to finish a collection quest. Instead we’re given a much more straightforward planet-scanning UI which allows you to collect the four elements you need to use when upgrading your weapons, armor, biotic utilities, and ship. This still isn’t perfect. To describe planet scanning, even after getting a few upgrades that speed it up and allow you to store more probes, as “somewhat tedious” is like describing the world’s fattest man as “a little chubby.”

Fortunately, there’s way more elements available in the galaxy than you actually need, so you can basically ignore all but the richest planets, just stopping by the others to read the thoroughly interesting descriptions and then moving on. Occasionally a planet will have an “anomaly” which will invariably let you go to the surface and perform a little mini-quest. In Mass Effect these sequences were all very similar, taking place in the same two or three prefab environments over and over. In ME2, each one is hand-crafted, and not all of them are combat-oriented. It’s a nice break in between the story missions, which have you first recruiting your team, then (optionally) doing missions to make each one more loyal, and then finally going after the Collectors with guns blazing on a “suicide mission” that never feels very suicidal because there’s an achievement description available right from the beginning that says “survive the suicide mission.”

While you’re doing all of this, you’ll visit several new locations, such as the lawless asteroid Omega, the Asari planet Ilium, and the Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka. You’ll also return to the Citadel, although your reception by the council whose asses you saved (assuming you chose to save them in ME1) is pretty pathetic. You can also sex up a variety of your shipmates — there are six possibilities in total, three for each sex, plus the option to have some encounters with your personal assistant. Both male and female versions of Shepard have the opportunity to get busy with aliens in addition to humans, which can lead to some very amusing dialog. Alternately, if you got involved with Kaiden, Ashley, or Liara in the first game, you can choose to remain true to them in the second. My wife forced Adrienne Shepard to stick with Liara, and we’re curious to see how it works out in Mass Effect 3. Adrian Shepard, on the other hand, is flirting with everything that moves. Hey, after two years frozen in space, a guy has needs, right?

In all, Mass Effect 2 is just a killer title, and an early contender for Game of the Year. It’s got action, romance, space travel, and a deep storyline that customizes itself to your playing style and the actions you choose to take. The characters are fun and interesting, the voice acting is top notch (Martin Sheen gets a crucial role as the head of Cerberus), and the game does an awesome job of setting up the third and supposedly final title. It will leave you looking forward to finding out more about Shepard and the galaxy’s ultimate fate, and eagerly anticipating the conclusion to the series.

Charlotte and I went to visit my parents at the condo they’re renting down at Ponce Inlet, Florida. They managed to get my sisters and one of my brothers down there, too, so it was almost a full family reunion (missing my brother Nick and his family). While down there, we also spent a couple of days at Disney World, which Charlotte’s never been to before. We hit the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot (and saw one show at Hollywood Studios) in a two-day whirlwind. Below are some picture galleries from the trip!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

That’s all for now, but more updates coming soon!

The Short Version

• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Depth
• Two Words: Swarming Splicers
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

The Long Version

I’m pretty torn about giving BioShock 2 only a “good” and not a “great” rating. I mean, here is a game far more ambitious in its storyline and symbolism than 90% of the dreck out there, but at the same time, whenever you start to really get into exploring these new parts of Rapture, it decides to throw an army of splicers at you and bog you down in pointless, repetitive combat. The game delivers excellent dialog, creates compelling characters for you to interact with, and features a few interesting moral choices … but it also tries too hard to shoehorn the new villain into the existing Rapture storyline, so much so that one is left wondering how it would be possible to have seen no sign of her influence during the first game. On the one hand, I played the game for hours basically every day after I bought it until I’d beaten it. On the other hand, I spent a decent chunk of those hours bitching to my wife (thanks, hon!) about how little fun I was having during yet another massive firefight.

I think what it comes down to is that the net result of the changes to the game play from the first game made this one more hardcore, and it has been a long time since I was a hardcore gamer. I no longer play games, even first-person shooters, for the combat. I don’t care that I can fight with plasmids and weapons at the same time, because I never found having to switch to be particularly cumbersome in the first place, since you were rarely facing more than a couple of enemies at a time. I don’t care that the weapons and plasmids are generally beefed up from the first game, because I never thought the ones in the first game needed much improvement. I didn’t come back to Rapture because I loved fighting legions of the same four splicers in the first game and wanted to fight many more.

I came back to Rapture because its decayed, art-deco beauty and tragic history make it without question one of the most compelling video game environments ever conceived. Nearly every part of Rapture is a work of art, and to explore it means contemplating what it might be like to exist there, to live in an underwater city, never seeing the sunlight, but with constant access to the beauty and mystery of the ocean depths. The original BioShock was so damn compelling because it was so gorgeous, and had gone so horribly wrong.

Fortunately, in this aspect, the game delivers. The Rapture of BioShock 2 is even more decayed than that of the first game (though, oddly, it didn’t seem as wet), but there are still glimpses of stunning beauty all around. While I was disappointed that we didn’t revisit any of the original areas, the new parts of Rapture shown in BioShock 2 fit right in and make sense as parts of the city. We’re given information on how Rapture was built, and how people originally got around it (a sort of undersea subway system) before the invention of personal bathyspheres.  We see Andrew Ryan’s amusing attempt to indoctrinate, via a horrific version of a Disney ride, the children of Rapture into fearing and hating the surface. We glimpse the seeds of that which would eventually be Ryan’s undoing even as we gain insight into what Rapture was like in its glory days.

I remain as baffled as ever as to why it is that Andrew Ryan, Sofia Lamb and Frank Fontaine’s audio diaries (among many others) are just lying all over the damn place in the city … but it’s a plot delivery vehicle that one can overlook without too much trouble. What one can’t overlook is the incessant focus on combat.

In BioShock 2, you’re a Big Daddy. One of the prototypes, actually, if you want to get specific, but it doesn’t really matter that much. As a Big Daddy, part of your job is to “adopt” Little Sisters and use them to harvest the genetic elixir Adam. Whenever you set a little sister down to gather, you’re mobbed by splicers. Also, whenever you hit an important plot point, you’re usually mobbed by splicers. When you visit a new area of the game, you’re usually given just enough exploration time to build up a dread that you’re going to be mobbed by splicers, and then you’re mobbed by splicers. Sometimes you revisit an area that you just cleared out less than five minutes ago, you find that it has been entirely repopulated with splicers, who proceed to mob you.

Sometimes while you’re being mobbed by splicers, a Big Daddy / Little Sister combo will come stumbling heedlessly right through the firefight, at which time the Big Daddy will almost assuredly get hit by one of the bullets or plasmids you are wildly spraying around like the money shot in a porn movie, become enraged, and decide to beat the crap out of you.

Understand: it’s not that I died a lot … I played the game on easy because I’m a wuss, and rarely found myself holding less than three first aid kits. It wasn’t so much that the fights were frustratingly difficult. No, they were just frustratingly frequent. Yes, you can set traps before the splicer-mobbing in some instances (particularly relating to the Little Sisters). No, these traps don’t do a particular amount of good, nor are they particularly fun to deploy. In a short time, the entire thing has become an exercise in tedium. “Ho-hum, another firefight with fifteen splicers. Let’s just get through this so that I can get back to the interesting part of the game.”

The parts of the game that are good are really, really good. There’s a scene late in the game involving a Little Sister that does a fantastic job of illustrating how Rapture looks through their eyes. There are small, poignant vignettes and audio logs to be found all over the place if you look for them which help to tell the story of the city. There’s even a couple of more significant moral choices to be made, beyond simply “rescue” or “harvest,” which help to shape the game’s ending … though to be honest in only one of these did I find myself actually wrestling with my decision. The other two might as well have “click here to be the good guy” show up on the screen.

So, overall, my return to Rapture was a good, but not great, experience. I found myself missing the slower pace and frequent creeping dread of the first game. I also found myself questioning the main plot quite heavily (and wondering what the hell happened to a couple of the people I met early on in the game). That’s okay. I enjoyed exploring Rapture again, thought the characters were excellent, and I was glad that they didn’t shoehorn in a “twist” just to compete with the first BioShock. If you’re a fan of lots of combat in your games, this is a no-brainer: go buy the game. If you’re less into combat, I still highly recommend it. Just be prepared for the fact that some parts of the game will become something of a slog.

Oh, also there is multi-player, if you’re into that sort of thing. I haven’t bothered with multi-player FPS’s in years, and see no reason to go back to them now, so I can’t give you any insight on that end. I assume it’s like most multi-player: jettisoning everything that’s good about the game in favor of yet more combat. As we’ve established, that’s not why I came back to Rapture in the first place.

Images borrowed from the good people at Giant Bomb

It’s been almost eight months since we moved to Indianapolis, where I had planned on dedicating more of my time to working on my personal projects. I’m pleased to say that I’ve been largely successful in this! I’ve got a lot going on, and it’s sometimes a bit hard to juggle everything. These periodic update posts actually help me to focus and figure out what the hell to work on!

Dart Publishing

Dart Publishing, Ltd. is the official name of the business I’ve been trying to get started with my friend for a while now. We’ve made huge leaps recently, thanks in part to having some extra time due to the Crispy Gamer implosion. I’m very nearly done with the first draft of the business plan, and will be sending it out to a few folks I know with way more business experience than I have, in order to get their feedback on it. From there, it’ll be revisions, and then probably applying for some local grants. Investor money is good, but free money is even better. Might as well look for that first, right?

Writing

Last month I finished not one, but two novels — my NaNoWriMo projects from 2007 and 2009, “The Broken God Machine” and “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters,” respectively. If anyone out there wants to read the first draft of The Broken God Machine, it’s ready for criticism. Just get in touch. I still need to make some tweaks to Monster Hunters before I open it up for critique from the outside world, but that should be happening soon. I’m also making some progress on the second draft of the sequel to The Blood That Bonds, currently titled “Blood Hunt.” I expect work on that to speed up significantly once I’m no longer spending my coffee shop time filling out competitive analysis forms and burn-rate spreadsheets for Dart. Speaking of TBTB …

The Blood That Bonds

I haven’t had too many responses in my agent search, and so far the responses I’ve had haven’t been positive. I’m not particularly discouraged — people are still reading the eBook and sending very positive feedback — but I’m beginning to wonder if I should revise the first chapter a little to make it a bit more attention-grabbing right from the start. There’s a little too much opening exposition and I think it’s turning agents off. We’ll see.

Photography

Unfortunately, the broken 18-55mm lens that I fixed with superglue for a while has broken again, so we’re stuck only using a distance lens on our camera, which is a pain in the ass, so we’re not taking many pics at the moment. I need to get off my ass and either re-fix the lens using a better piece of plastic (and more superglue), or just cough up the ~$140 it costs to buy a new one. Why does everything have to be so damn expensive these days? Blargh! Rotten kids … GET OFF MY LAWN!

Cocktails

I went on a bit of a beer kick the past few months, trying lots of craft beers and really strengthening my understanding and appreciation of the different types available (turns out I am way more of an ale guy than a lager guy, with a particular fondness for brown ales, porters, and stouts). I’m coming out of that now though and getting back to crafting new cocktails. I’m still experimenting right now, but when I come up with something good, I’ll post it here.

Video Games

I went out and picked up BioShock 2 the other night at my wife’s urging (one of many reasons why I married her!) and have been playing through it. I’ll post a full review here when I’m finished, but I’m pretty far in and while I’m enjoying it, I’m kind of disappointed in how much more they’ve chosen to focus on combat. You’re constantly being swarmed with enemies, and while I’m not dying a lot, it’s just not a whole lot of fun to be in non-stop firefights. After BioShock 2, I’ll be picking up Mass Effect 2, and Assassin’s Creed 2 … apparently it’s all about the sequels right now.

Reading

Sadly, given how many activities I have going on, I haven’t done much reading since Christmas, when I burned through Bill Simmons’s Book of Basketball in a week or so. I’ve got three novels and a short story collection all waiting for my attention, not to mention a non-fiction book on real estate investing that I really should finish

French

Mon francais n’est pas superb … but it’s getting better. I do a half an hour of studying per day almost every weekday, and Charlotte and I are beginning to try to speak to each other more in French. We’ve also found some French cultural events to go to around town, and I’m about to start in on French grammar in addition to speaking/listening. It’s still a halting, frustrating process — I don’t like being bad at things — but all these little steps should hopefully add up to me being able to hold something of a coherent conversation with her friends and family back in the homeland, sometime within the next couple of years. Hopefully!

Travel

Speaking of the homeland, Charlotte and I will be making another France trip in May. Her sister is getting married in the south of France, which gives us the opportunity to fly into Barcelona in Spain, and spent the next week driving to Toulouse (actually, the nearby town of Albi), where we’ll attend the wedding, hang out for another day or two, and then I’ll fly back while she goes to Paris to take her finals for the French Lit program she’s working on. We’ve also got a trip to Florida happening in March, to visit my parents and sister, and a trip to Syracuse happening … sometime. Then as summer rolls into fall, we’ve got a wedding in New York City and a wedding in New Hampshire (I think) to attend. Yeesh!

… So that’s what’s up with me, in case anyone was wondering!

I’ve been playing guitar since around 1991, when I was fourteen years old or so. My first guitar was a cheap, generic-brand acoustic (looked a lot like this Yamaha) that cost me $139 bucks because it had some cracks in the finish, and the action on it was so high that you could’ve mixed the genes of mighty Thor and Jesus Christ himself, and the resulting dude still would not have been able to play barre chords on it for any extended period of time.

In, I think, 1993 I graduated to a black and white Stratocaster clone by the seemingly defunct company Regal Guitars, which cost me $210. That thing had sticky tuners, couldn’t hold a low E to save its life, and sounded like pig anus unless you ran it through multiple effects pedals. Nonetheless, I rocked out for many years on it, using my DOD 3RTR pedal (which I still have!) to get big-hair 80s metal tones when what I really wanted was some Billy Corgan-esque, fat layers of bass-heavy Les Paul distortion. D’oh.

In, 1997 or 1998 I bought a Fender DG20CE acoustic-electric for about three hundred bucks, which has since moved with me from Syracuse, to SoCal, back to Syracuse, to Philadelphia, to New York, and finally to Indianapolis. It’s got nice tone (though the pickup kind of sucks), and after I brought it to a “guitar doctor” the action’s not bad, but it’s not exactly a fine instrument. Amusing side note: my dad brought my old, $139 guitar to a “doctor” a few years later, and it now plays better than the Fender. Dude lowered the action by like six inches.

Finally, in 2004 I managed to get my hands on an Epiphone Elitist Les Paul Standard Plus in heritage cherry sunburst, for about $750 from eBay. While not a true Gibson Les Paul, the Elitist line (discontinued in 2009) was way above the standards of the rest of the Epiphone offerings. The guitar is beautiful. It sounds beautiful, plays beautiful, and looks beautiful. I love it and have no regrets whatsoever about not springing the extra couple hundred bucks to get an inferior Les Paul with “Gibson” on the headstock, or the extra grand it would’ve cost to get a Gibson that was actually superior. I also came in second in an online poker tournament and converted the prize money into a POD XT multi-effects unit that complements the Les Paul wonderfully.

I run all of my (electric) guitars through a vintage, late-70s Fender Bassman 10 tube amp that my uncle gave to me back when I was in high-school. It’s got great tone, helps me get the deep bass I like in my guitars, and looks pretty swank to boot!

All that said, I find that moving on up in the guitar world has, rather than satisfying my cravings, only increased my interest in acquiring all kinds of different guitars. So, for the hell of it, here are the ones I’ve got my eye on as “near-future” (hopefully next five years) purchases:

Taylor 414ce Acoustic-Electric

When it comes to high-level acoustic guitars, you’re either a Martin man, or a Taylor man. Martin makes some beautiful, highly playable instruments, and have been doing so since approximately the dawn of time. They make their guitars using traditional methods, and the results are outstanding. Taylor has taken a different approach, using the latest industrial methodologies — laser guidance systems, computer-controlled sonic imaging, etc. I respect both brands and would be happy as hell to have one of either, but I love the thin body, grand-auditorium shape and clean sound of the Taylor *14ce series. The 414ce is a bit more within my expected budget (about $1900), otherwise I’d be all over the 914ce, which is a goddamn work of art.

Fender American Standard Stratocaster

I went through a period where I was all “The Les Paul is the be-all and end-all of electric guitars and there’s no point in owning anything else.” I’ve since softened that stance significantly, though I do still feel that if you sent me to a desert island and told me I could only take one electric guitar on earth, it’d be a Gibson Les Paul Standard from their custom shop (probably the ’59 or ’60 VOS). However, there’s something to be said for the versatility and tone of the Fender Strat, and the American Standard is, at $1150, the model I’ve got my eye on. I like the Sienna Sunburst with Maple Fretboard option, myself.

G&L Tribute L-2000 Bass

Sooner or later, you gotta buy a bass. While I don’t expect to ever be a virtuoso at it, I still want to be able to lay down my own bass tracks when recording music, so this is my choice. Why? Well, it’s expensive enough to not be cheapshit (about $600), and it’s cheap enough that I won’t feel like I’m throwing away money on things I can’t appreciate. Also, it passed the all important “Charlotte flipping at random through the pages of Musician’s Friend and going ‘I want that one!’” test. She digs the blue one, and I am pretty fond of it as well. Second choice would probably be Walnut Satin.

Quick note: I am not particularly interested in disparaging or insulting anyone, so don’t expect this to be a gossipy, tell-all kind of post. I just wanted to clear things up in case anyone had any questions as to why I’m no longer with CG.

In late 2009 Crispy Gamer acquired GamerDNA.com, 360Voice.com, TweetMyGaming.com, and an associated ad network running ads on multiple privately-owned gaming websites. The board of directors, excited by the massive increase in page views and ad sales opportunities, decided that it was time to cut costs on the Crispy Gamer front, consolidate down to one company, and focus mainly on revenue. They laid off Crispy Gamer’s entire editorial staff, including the managing editor, the copy-editor, the senior writer, and several contract writers. They alerted the other freelancers that there would be no further work coming in. They also told the development team, consisting of myself, my friend Gabe, and our Junior Engineer Stanley, that our services would only be needed for a few more weeks as they transitioned Crispy Gamer to a more basic website.

To that end, Gabe and I were still technically employed by Crispy for a few more weeks, working on some back-end changes to the site. It felt a little creepy, like dressing up a friend for his own funeral, but this is a part of the internet startup world: sometimes things don’t go as expected and the board, who let’s not forget invested $8mm in this company, jumps in and assumes control in order to try and recoup their initial investment.

For my own part, I find the timing unfortunate. Beginning with the redesign in May 2009 and moving forward into the summer and fall of 2009, I thought the site had really turned the corner. It was much easier to use, much easier to navigate, and much easier to read than the previous design had been. We’d developed some really cool technology using current AJAX and DHTML techniques, and were looking forward to building even more. Our user community was taking off, with nearly every article getting several comments, and some of them getting dozens. Our numbers were holding steady despite dramatically decreasing the amount of paid traffic … in short: people were using the site, liking it, and coming back without having to be enticed by marketing or ads.

That’s exactly what you want, when you build a website. Unfortunately, that tipping point came too late. Instead of happening at about six months in, it took about eighteen, because there was a lot of stumbling in the first year. This, also, is not exactly uncommon in the world of startups, and I don’t blame the Crispy founders or employees for it — sometimes it takes time to find your voice and establish who you are. It’s just sad, because I’ve been on the other side of things. I started working for GameSpy in 1999, just as it was making its move from “three guys in an office running a couple volunteer sites” to “investment-backed real company with multiple product types”. It was touch-and-go during that time and a single different — not even necessarily bad — decision could’ve submarined the entire company. Instead, we struggled through, figured things out, and became profitable. It’s a great feeling and an amazing thing to have gone through, and I’m sorry that many of my fellow Crispy staffers don’t get to find out what it’s like.

I worked with a lot of good, smart, talented people at Crispy and I’m happy to have spent the last two-plus years there. We may not have made it over the hump, but we came damn close, and I’m proud of what we accomplished with the site. Now it’s time to move on to the next adventure. Gabe and I have both accepted some work with a San Francisco-based startup, for one thing. For another, I’m 35 pages and counting into a business plan for our own internet startup, which we’re hoping will allow us to raise some grant money and be able to employ ourselves full-time. It’s a very busy, very interesting time, but I’m excited about the possibilities out there and looking forward to continuing to learn and improve as a web designer and development director.

Oh, and now that I’m done with CG, you can expect more frequent updates to this blog, too. Woohoo!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve added a new subsection to this site – a Web Design and Development Portfolio (it also features some info about the work I’ve done in game design). You can access it by clicking the “Portfolio” link above, or clicking this portfolio link right here, or clicking on this handy image:

I am officially on the job market, so if anyone out there in cyber land has any leads, please send ‘em my way!